Jean-Paul Sartre

La Nausee

Those who know me know why I wanted to read this book. (The title was just a coincidental joy.) So I made me a birthday present of it and have only just stolen time to read the book. It took me a week. (Life with children.)

It was a used copy, and the old yellow highlighting might sum it up were I not slightly mentally ill: it stops at p. 13! I read on, because a man wrote the book, and I wanted his point of view. I was told, "Sartre is difficult." Only in as much as mental illness is difficult. Only as difficult as staring at those technicolor carnival reliefs painted on sideshow "cirque du freak" trailers. I have eyes, so I wanted to see. I did have to stand on tiptoes, and that was slightly painful until I grew numb and open (like Anny's thighs on stinging nettles).

All in all it is a book about existence...awareness of existence. Not simple existence, not even poetic existence, but profound inconceivable existence. God understands what I mean. My best attempt to explain this amorphous concept revolves around the act of saying a word again and again until it has no meaning yet the thing to which it applies still is. Or staring at one's reflection for a time adequate to induce a state of foreignness--where one no longer recognizes self but only an unsettling existence. It's the smallness that I feel when planets and stars spin across a planetarium's concave ceiling. Unsettling to know that it all is and that I am with it. What to do then? Master the art of shrugging it off or else become like the book's protagonist (Roquentin): "all alone, completely alone with horrible monstrosities, running through the streets, passing heavily in front of others, eyes staring, fleeing his ills yet carrying them with him..."

I am an outsider, of course; Roquentin has no God. His existence remains formless, shifting. In saying that, I don't think man would really invent God to ground or protect himself. I think it would be as easy to be driven insane by religion, and the only safety found is what happens in another life. Better to serve Someone because you love Him, because He is the only One worthy of service. I can see the promise of heaven, but so too can I see comfort in composting; it is less exhausting, could be more appealing than going on and on. So I believe, because I believe, therefore my existence is purposed. Although I imagine I could be comfortable, perhaps more so, without a purpose. Roquentin seems not to be comfortable having no purpose; his lobster tastes like soap. He has outlived himself.

I think if others have not been startled to discover existence in moments like this, they will be disgusted by La Nausee. It will be psychobabble, mental illness, a ridiculous waste of time. I'm not sure I would disagree with that, save little hidden treasures. While no suctorialist, I recognize the gem of a nuance when I see one, and La Nausee holds many in its long gallery:

*I feel more and more need to write--in the same proportion as I grow old, you might say.

*My memories are like coins in the devil's purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.

*Beware of literature. I must follow the pen, without looking for words.

*The soul of the Self-Taught Man is in his eyes, his magnificent, blindman's eyes, where it blooms. Let mine do the same, let it come and stick its nose against the windows: they could exchange greetings.

*I don't listen to them any more: they annoy me. They're going to sleep together. They know it. Each one knows that the other knows it.

*Virgan [a humanist] was without equal. He would take off his spectacles, as if to show himself naked in his man's flesh, and stare at me with eloquent eyes, with a weary, insistent look which seemed to undress me, and drag out my human essence, then he would murmur melodiously: "There are people, old man, there are people," giving the "there are" a sort of awkward power, as if his love of people, perpetually new and astonished, was caught up in its giant wings.

*I don't want to be integrated, I don't want my good red blood to go and fatten this lymphatic beast...

*All is drowned in poetic impression.

*There are no more perfect moments.

*I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again."

*I live surrounded by my dead passions.

*I outlive myself.

*You annoyed me with your stolid look. You seemed to say: I'm normal; and you practically breathed health, you dripped with moral well-being.

*There are times when you mustn't cry--or else you'll be unclean. But if you drop a log on your foot, you can do as you please...

*I live in the past...I close my eyes and try to imagine that I'm still living inside it.

Over half of p. 154 is heartbreaking text, but it's real, it's life, it's worth reading.

*My whole life is behind me. I see it completely, I see its shape and the slow movements which have brought me this far. There is little to say about it: a lost game, that's all.

*Now I am going to be like Anny, I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

*I find it strange that I have to stay two more hours in this city which, without bothering about me anymore, has straightened up its furniture and put it under dust sheets so as to be able to uncover it in all its freshness, to new arrivals this evening, or tomorrow. I feel more forgotten than ever.

I won't give away the bizarre event culminating the Self-Taught Man's (S-TM) journey through the alphabet, but I will say that I thought Sartre something of a hypocrite to present such an angry reaction to the Corsican and not the S-TM. I thought he was a moral relativist, yet this seems like pluralism, and what is going too far? Even so, I shouldn't talk about such things; they're far beyond my scope of understanding. What I do understand, what does resonate, supersedes what I do not and makes for a good read.

I'm particularly happy with the last page and think Sartre ended the novel well:

*But a time would come when the book would be written, when it would be behind me, and I think that a little of its clarity might fall over my past. Then, perhaps, because of it, I could remember my life without repugnance. Perhaps one day, thinking precisely of this hour, of this gloomy hour in which I wait, stooping, for it to be time to get on the train, perhaps I shall feel my heart beat faster and say to myself: "That was the day, that was the hour, when it all started." And I might succeed--in the past, nothing but the past--in accepting myself.

In some ways, La Nausee exists where I exist, and so it touches me.

Besides, any book that mentions family members (Fouche, Napoleon's confidant) gets my vote, cheap easy that I am.

Accidental Poem

I saw poetry in everything today.
The rock at the entrance of the grocery store,
everything.
I thought of your dad's book.
Of commenting on it.
Of sitting on a stump and reflecting.
Of penning what is coursing through my veins.
Ink.
Jotting it down.
But I don't know if I will have the time,
if i will find it,
if i will make it.
Everything has color, is alive.
I'm not euphoric; I'm kind of melancholy.
Enough annoys me. And yet
everything is rising with the yeast of poetry.
I'm just compelled. It comes in spurts.
I should get going.
Dishes need scrubbing.
Faster scrubbing.
Floor needs sweeping.
Faster sweeping.
Poetry is waiting at the back door for a kiss.
I may get to it.

The Winner!

Pull My Daisy

Swing My Rose
Let your skirt ride, sister;
there's no danger in Golgotha
only scarafaggi
and Mez
and the eternal comfort
of mid century glass cylindars
stuck with robin's-egg blue,
half-filled with Alka-Seltzer
and waves of sound
richocheting horns
clinking bottles
and the rantings
of the unequally yoked
while the bishop's mother
shudders on the organ
waiting to emerge
from the dilating cervix
capping her skull
in tandem with
Peter's tender orb
dozing in the warm
innocent flesh
of his cable knit
Anchorage ski hat
growing as English ivy
into the mortar
of the kindest kind of partition
beckoned into numbing night
by the dim-lit
swinging shadows of the rose.
7-12-06

A Ton Meant
In the realm of impression
in the sweaty boiler room
of my inner machinations
I am despot over
mordant personal perspective
fueled by literal credit,
a desire to stand on my own
without governmental influence,
without keeping folders
for annual evaluations
from someone who doesn't have
even the first inkling
of the effect of nematodes
on edible orange roots.
So it was called for,
it was justified and keen
in the dark-greased
underground railway
of my mind.
But
I never claimed
it would meet with the light of day
and produce daisies.
You only said you wanted it
and
I only gave you what you asked for.

Beaches

Here
where land meets water
and water meets sky
and crescent hangs over
the marching of time
the wind dons eye shadow
purple and blue
and life carries on
a heartbeat from You.
7-1-06

In the sun
the dead fish head
floats in warm water
bubbling from its slit throat
eyes aglow
a million guanine crystals
reflecting complex miracles.
This tapetum
eludes Stanford's best man;
he can't craft it by hand
yet can undo
what God does
and does.
7-1-06

Valleys

And there you were
in early morning hours;
my birthday
carried you over
cold and wet
under a manmade sun.
For a brief moment
you were my fate
yet I was suspended
retarded
encapsulated
in the mirror a foot away;
I saw myself
a violet water droplet
fixed in oil,
floating between worlds,
vivid lava waiting to erupt
with a word of permission,
just a word.
I held on for dear life
waiting
and watching you breathe
the day you were
and were not
mine.
5-21-06

A surprise ending
finds a fluffy pink tumor growing
where no child ever will again.
I nurse my condition
in hours in bed,
spiraling flesh in layers,
protecting my innards,
culturing my pearl...
nothing does anything
to take away the breaking heart.
So I will stand a statue again
in the garden of good and evil
holding out my heaven-stretched hands
while time stops and yellow lillies bloom around me,
grass grows over the edges of my feet,
and you become patina
for the soot-colored hours
of reanimation.
5-21-06

My last child
lay in her frilly bedbox
crowded by the enormity
of my smile.
Moments were ripe, delicious, unending.

Your last child
lay in her smart slatted cart
in a sea of space
left by the short flat line
on my dumbstruck face.
Moments were stolen,
the nazis always on the stairs.
5-21-06

Tell me next year will be better,
the smile at the party will be real,
the bathroom will not be occupied by my grief.
Tell me I will be sure and sewn together,
that I will have collected my tangled viscera from off the floor.
Tell me
that I'm ok,
that I really am ok,
that this is a woman's fleeting foolishness
and each day gets better from here.
5-21-06

In the belly of the whale...
I wake up and I'm viscid
from a concentrated slumber-
no fluids, no childrens' lives going on
no chores and cleaning
just sleep and unsupervised thinking
so the brick is on me;
barely a breath or a heartbeat.
I send puffs of desperation up
to the One Who knows me better
than I know myself
and loves me anyway
and walks with me when I stray.
Shame floods my face and neck-
too many miracle requests
and no more
and now more:
Your peace find me.
I tell my raining tears they will not cry
as demons fly at me with lances of lead thinking
and grace fends them off just long enough
for numbness to wave them away.
Noses to wipe,
floors to sweep...
our lives in His hands.
By noon my reflection
in the door of the microwave
mouths that I am
making it through one more day.
5-23-06

The dogwood whispered your name in lullabies
so I stripped her of her adorning song
and she is ugly now
without the ivory egg that fell
tripped by winds and mossy rotten branches.
She is ugly now
without the gleam
of her chiming metal earrings...
because she showed me my life
and I took her down a notch.
In her image of me my bough was broken,
my life no longer a beautiful dream.
We had a row;
I tussled and won
and would cut her down
but I know going too far.
And I know she was here
before me and all my problems
and will be long after.
5-24-06

A damp fire
fills my head with thick choking smoke,
piles on dry brush
and devil's rain.
The sun shines as tears fall;
they have their brief season,
enough to weave grey curtains,
to cover any ray of happiness or sanity.
I'm a gerbil in a wheel
clack clack clack;
there's no escaping-
the rat trap closes on my fractured half-beating heart.
I snap to
in a panic
in a rubber room.
I am on the brink
when a tiny sleeping hand falls on my mouth
a tiny fist with a tiny wet thumb,
balm of the ages,
salve for the soul;
peace be still.
The fire is out,
the curtain lifts,
sleep collapses in a heap
over my sick form.
I steal relief,
brief moments,
before the next wave.
5-28-06